A Quiet Reunion
by nut-tree
Summary: A post Reichenbach Sherlock returns in secret to the house of an old friend, but new understandings and feelings begin to emerge . Sherlolly (although initially subtle) Began as a one-shot but I've decided to extend it to a longer story. Please R&R!
1. a detective calls

Author's note: never written anything from the Sherlock world before, but I saw an amazing fanvid which made me ship Molly/Sherlock (although I am aware its unlikely to happen) and I wanted to write a fic for them! Even though it's pretty un-romancey. Sorry for grammar mistakes!  
>********<p>

The doorbell rang and I knew it was him.  
>Peeking out through the curtains, I took the advantage of looking at him without him seeing me just yet. The sky was a dark plumb colour and the rain bounced off the pavement around him like a hail of bullets but he seemed not to have noticed. His dark hair was longer than when I had seen him last, ducking into a cab on a night not unlike this one, and his face seemed thinner too, causing his cheekbones to appear even sharper, but apart from that he was exactly the same. I let out a small sigh of relief.<br>"Molly, kindly stop staring at me and let me in" he said calmly, his eyes fixed on the letter box which he was propping open with a finger in order to be heard. I started and hurried into the hall, fumbling with a bunch of keys. The same old Sherlock.

"Thank you" he said finally, stepping over the threshold and walking straight towards the kitchen, leaving wet and muddy footprints that I would have to clear up later, not that I minded.

"You've given up your diet again, " I heard him say from somewhere ahead of me. "A pity, though not unexpected. Will your brother be out long?" I followed him into the room and shook my head, still taking in his presence and trying not to look too happy.  
>"He's just gone to the shop for some cigarettes, but I told him I had a … friend, coming over anyway."<p>

"How's John doing?"

I hadn't actually seen Dr Watson for a few months, but I had bumped into his landlady outside the bingo hall the week before, so I had a vague idea about how he was getting on, and it wasn't well.

"I…not brilliantly."

Sherlock sighed.

"I thought as much, his blog's become blatantly depressing."

"mmm" I replied, aware of how his eyes were still roving around the room, taking in every mark and scratch and empty space and judging the very nature of my existence on it. His sodden coat was dripping water onto the squares of lino.

"Tea?" I inquired quickly, hoping to divert his attention, and it momentarily worked.

"Thank you. I'll take it up in my room. I need quiet."

"Erm…right, ok, if you just wait a second…" I clattered around for a few minutes with cups and saucers and only just remembered to turn the kettle on , but somehow I got to the stage where I actually had a cup of tea in my hand and nodded towards the door.

"You're on the second floor, I'll show you."

He followed without a word and as we climbed the stairs I found myself wittering on about nothing in particular.

"…Of course, this is really my parent's house, but Dad's …well…dead, like I said and Mum's in a retirement home and it's near work and Alex needed someone with him so I moved back. Hasn't it gotten cold? You'd never think it was May…"  
>I half wanted and definitely expected him to stop me but he didn't, seeming lost in own word just as he so often had in the lab.<p>

We came to one of the old guest bedrooms and I pushed open the door before stepping aside to let him in first.

"I'm just three doors down if you…I don't actually know what I was going to say then …but, but the bathroom's the door nearest the stairs and you know where the kitchen is if you want some water or anything…"

Sherlock squeezed past me into the room as I spoke, causing me to blush at his close proximity , took one glance out of the window and sat down on the bed, his back poker straight. I put the mug of tea down on the bedside table and hovered awkwardly near the door.

"So… goodnight! I'll see you tomorrow, probably." I started to leave, already cursing myself for that overenthusiastic "goodnight!" , but the abrupt return of his voice brought me back.

"How old were you?"

I hesitated, then laughed a little uncomfortably

"How old was I when?"

"When your mother started hitting you."

I tried for a moment to smile, to brush the question off, but I knew my face had gone white.

"What? Where did you get that from?"

His expression didn't change but he suddenly began to speak quickly and unfalteringly, as if he was simply counting from one to a hundred.

"You walk into your own kitchen as thought you would rather be anywhere else in the world, suggesting some kind of trauma occurring there, this is your childhood home so it's likely to have occurred then. Your mother is in a home but on your calendar she's not mentioned, no visits, no medical appointments, nothing. Of course, that would be expected if you were lax in updating the calendar but although it's sparsely filled the corners of the pages are worn, you look at it often, it's important, suggesting there's just a problem between you and your mother. You have low self-confidence, you have chosen a workplace that repels people, you don't like letting them in too close until they have earned your trust, you would also not have chosen that profession if you were not already comfortable with the sight of blood and injuries. Your makeup is badly applied, no one taught you how to do it at a young age and although your brother lives here the house is spotless, you clean up after him, you are protective of him. There are dents in the wall; someone has been knocked against it, hard. It has been painted over but not for years, the colour clashes with your implements and the size of the house shows you can obviously afford to redecorate but you haven't, you don't want to think about what happened there."

I blinked and took a few deep breaths until I trusted my voice enough not to crack. Sherlock continued to watch me all the while.

"Seven. She found me looking in her jewellery box. Goodnight."

I turned to leave for a second time but once again the sound of his voice stopped me.

"You spent eleven years at least being abused, and the only way it seems to have affected you is an abysmal choice in boyfriends. And you thought you were someone who "didn't count?"

He smiled for the first time that evening, a fleeting, strained one but a smile all the same and it made me suddenly feel warm, and confident enough to ask a very obvious question.

"What are you doing here Sherlock? In London?"

He half shrugged. "It was time. I'll see you in the morning, Molly Hooper."

I did leave then, smiling to myself. I stopped at the end of the corridor and allowed myself to look back just once. He was still sitting motionless, silhouetted in the amber light of the streetlamp just outside his window.


	2. Alex

I'd been up since the crack of dawn, cleaning the kitchen, hovering up the stairs, just doing anything that needed doing in my favourite pink dressing gown. I'd just finished feeding Toby when the creak of the stairs abruptly put an end to my quiet but enthusiastic rendition of "Wannabe". I thought for a moment that it might be Sherlock, but the tread was familiar and too careless to be him.

"You're up early Al!" I trilled in a way that would put a 1950's housewife to shame and heard the normal indistinguishable grunt in reply before the blare of voices on BBC Breakfast. I smiled to myself and shooed Toby out of the sink.

Alex opened a bleary eye as I came into the lounge with a stack of toast and flopped down next to him on the sofa. "You didn't have to make that Mol" he managed in the split second before he stuffed two triangles of bread into his mouth. In some ways he'd never really grown out of being 14.

I sniffed and reached over his lap to grab the remote. "I'm here to make sure you don't starve yourself, I can at least do that"

"Hmmph" His eyes narrowed reproachfully and his frame stiffened, and for a horrible moment I thought I'd said something bad enough to turn it into one of _those _days. He did spend several minutes staring at the veterinary program I'd flicked on with an ominously blank expression, but when he spoke again the teasing tone had come back into his voice and I knew we were safe, although it was not the topic I'd have chosen.

"Where's your fancy man then?"

I tried very hard to arrange my face normally. "He's not my _fancy man_ Alex he's j-just a friend. Like I said."

"Yeah?" He grinned. "Why've you gone all red then Molly Moon? And why've you been shopping at Sainsburys? And wh-"

"Oh shut up you're as bad as him." I growled, shoving him with a sofa cushion. "_Anyway_ i-in answer to your question he's still in bed so don't go stomping around o-or walking about after the shower with your thingie out for heavens sake."

"I would never dream of traumatising my only sister so, but you're wrong."

"S-sorry?"

"You're wrong. No blokes in this house except for me"

I squinted at him. "A-are you trying to be funny again Al?"

He laughed but when he turned to look at me there was something like concern in his expression, as ironic as that was. "I'm serious. Checked the bedrooms this morning to see who it was that was sweeping my favourite sister off her feet at last and nada. All the rooms are empty , all the beds are unslept in."

"B-but that's impossible" I stuttered. "He was there. In the mauve room. Last night. I don't-"

"Molly." I stopped to look at him quizzically. The concerned expression was even more pronounced now. He sighed. "I know I'm a bit of a misery to have around the house at the moment, and a lazy bugger to boot, but if you ever want an evening to yourself you don't have to-"

I believe he was stopped by the deadly expression on my face. "I'm just saying…" he trailed off lamely.

I sighed .

"I wouldn't do that. Alex you should know I wouldn't. And as unlikely a-as it might seem he is real and he. Er. He sort of does his own… thing. I'm sure he'll pop in later."

"Alright then." He brushed several crumbs out of his stubble and stretched hugely, causing several joints to pop in a way that made me wince, then grabbed the empty plate and shuffled off in direction of the kitchen. A moment later I heard the tap running. "He really must be worried if he's washing up" I thought wryly. His voice came again through the walls but it was too muffled to hear so I clicked the pause button on the remote.

"Sorry what was that?"

"I said when do you think this gu- AAARGH"

There was the sound of smashing china and swearing. I laughed and stood up, assuming Toby had just jumped out and surprised him again; Alex really wasn't a cat person.

"No!" I froze. He sounded urgent, hushed. "Molly stay exactly where you are! There's a guy trying to break in but I'm ringing the police now."

My brain whirred and then clicked. But just to make sure… "Alex!"

"What? Keep your voice down he'll hear!"

There were several problems with this reasoning, not the least being that he's made enough noise to wake up the entire street second before, but it was much easier to go along with it so I adopted a stage whisper.

"Wait… what does he look like? The man?"

He sighed impatiently "I dunno, tall, dark coat, poncey haircut"

I rushed past him (crouched behind one of the cupboard doors cradling his mobile) to the big kitchen window and waved at Sherlock, leaning against it and obviously considering at after what time it was appropriate to start smashing panes. His eyes lit up with faint interest at the sight of me and when I gestured at the front door he disappeared.

"Molly" Croaked Alex, disengaging himself from his hiding place. " What. The. Hell?"

I waved a hand vaguely and went to let Sherlock in, aware of Alex following close behind. My hand shook slightly undoing the latch.

"Thankyou." Sherlock spoke in clipped tones as he strode across the threshold "Morning Molly… Molly's relation. " He gave an almost invisible nod to Alex and tramped straight upstairs, trailing brick dust.

Alex's eyebrows raised almost to his hairline, and then he turned to me, now wordless.

"So that's Sherlock. My … friend." I said.

"Coffee. Now. Black two sugars." Rang the voice of my Brother's worst nightmare.


	3. Living with Sherlock

Authors note: Yay I underestimated the interest there would be in me starting this back up again, thank you everyone! But also… I never liked the title of this to begin with, and as I'm extending it I don't think it really fits the story now either, could I please have some suggestions as to what else to call it? Thanks in advance lovlies!

This is only a short transition chapter, but needed to be done, sorry!

Over the next few days I stuttered and made an idiot of myself more often than I'd ever done in my life and began to understand John Watson on an entirely new level.

Despite them being, well men, and him mainly showing wonderful patience for Sherlock's foibles, I'd always felt something was… not quite right around the names he called him and the amount of times he'd come storming out of the labs, for example. That sort of thing really hurt Sherlock no matter how hard he tried to hide it. But having Sherlock as a house mate made things a bit clearer.

The fridge was the first thing to be taken over, tissue samples and all sorts, but that wasn't so much of a problem since it'd always been my very least favourite part of the house and he knew that. But then the lounge and dining room became slowly full of files and weird objects until there was almost no room to sit, and even then housing maps were pinned to the walls and rubbish piled on top of more rubbish. To begin with I started sorting it into neater piles after my shift but Sherlock was annoyed when he got home, and after a while of anything being anywhere I started to see the order in the chaos, and became afraid of moving anything that wasn't mine. There was also the late night Violin playing, and how sometimes you'd be in a room for hours and suddenly find out he'd been motionless in thought behind the door or under a table the entire time. Once he was even on the window ledge outside the second bathroom. The microwave caught on fire twice and both times I had to handle it since Charlie was sulking Sherlock couldn't be visible in case anyone came around to check on us. The one night I spent out with Meera was cut short when he texted me to come home and explain why the staples on my kitten poster were angled at a way that was apparently unusual for a right-handed person. I'd given him keys on to the house on that first morning but he constantly forgot them so I had to get up at any hour of the night to let him in from mysterious midnight rambles.

Some of this was irritating but I'd been prepared for a good half of it, and it was rewarded by getting to spend time with him. He needed me to listen to deductions that made little or no sense without context and to explain how the technology in the house worked and sometimes relate information about the recent-history of the morgue. It was little things, but still he needed me, and thinking about that and being the focus of those eyes and to be taken a bit more seriously than I'd been before made my heart beat a trillion times a minute and everything seem worth it. I also knew that whatever he was doing was to keep the people we'd had to fake his death for safe, so logically too I really _knew_ it was worth it. It wasn't so with Alex.

Alex wasn't a clean person and the house had been a state when I'd first moved back, but he seemed to have some male pride about that having been his mess whereas now it was a strangers. And he was only just recovering and needed his sleep. And although, actually maybe because of, Sherlock always avoiding him or talking over his head, he found his personality mortally offensive somehow and it didn't help that he didn't really know what Sherlock was doing, I had told him "government stuff" feeling like an untalented extra from James Bond and I imagine because he felt he owed me one after the last few months he asked nothing else. After a while, despite my coaxing, Alex stopped leaving his room unless Sherlock had retreated to his. I went up and talked to him, of course I did. And I talked to Sherlock about toning down, although not too forcefully in case I was completely rebuffed or it affected his work too much. But I could still feel Alex slipping away from me again. Like numb fingers letting go of an anchoring rock in a current.


End file.
